Origins

• Dissertation

Origins

• Dissertation
• And then an article

What is it?

Database of Roman Temples

• Entries
  • All temples in Rome
  • All Roman-period temples

What is it?

Database of Roman Temples

• Features
  • Location
  • Date
  • Divinity
  • Style
  • Orientation
  • Associated bibliography

Lot of things that are not (I think) of interest to more general gazetteers. {.fragment}

How?

1. Originally looked for the data in existing projects (like Pleiades)
   • Incomplete & sometimes wrong
2. Downloaded data from existing projects (Pleiades, vici.org, DARE)
3. Cleaned it up
4. Mashed it all up together in a spreadsheet
5. Moved it to a
   • Low-barrier entry to collaboration
   • Automatic archiving
     • OK, not really
6. Some scripts to automate conversion & archiving

How?

Hit the books!

What it looks like

WAIT!

• See what I did there?

What I learned to do this (so far)

1. More UNIX shell scripting
2. GIS/geojson utilities like jq & ogr2ogr
3. Leaflet.js
   • javascript

Short-term Goals

• Start using it to
  • answer research questions
  • teach
• Contribute back our corrections & additions to original projects
  • “Think community” (Patrick Burns)
• Publicize it more
• Get it into a “better” format
  • Make it link-able

Long-Term Goals

• More!
  • Add more temples
  • Add other kinds of structures(?)
    • A few mithraea are already in there
  • Add non-points like the Servian/Aurleian Wall or the pomerium
• Let users choose what to map
• Other things?

Challenges

💰💰💰

• 💰💰💰
• Personnel
  • Admin staff
  • Tech support
• Workload
  • Teaching
  • Other obligations

Challenges (2)

People

• Colleagues
  • Not a lot of them
  • Just as busy as you are
• Students
  • Undergraduate
  • Not a lot of them either
    • Especially at upper levels

Some solutions

• Collaborate

• (My one & only meme-ish slide)
• (I’m sure @ekansa has a better one.)

Some solutions

• Collaborate
  • Internal
    • Rome Research Group

Some solutions

• Collaborate
• Internal
• Rome Research Group
• Summer “Institute”

CSCI class: Rotational leaflet markers

Some solutions (2)

• Collaborate
  • External
    • #lawdi — LAWDNY
    •  
    • “Think community” (P. Burns)
• Use what you’re doing anyway
  • Teaching